Threnody (Book 1) (14 page)
The sound emanating out of the ravine increased, as the horde grew more agitated as John continuously repeated his address to Reams. The big man could tell John was shifting his position and exerting great effort by the way his voice changed and echoed, but still he was unable to look into the ravine. He had never felt so cowardly or so helpless in his entire life, but he knew what he had to do. As the sounds of the fight below continued, Reams slowly turned – head hung low – and walked away. While he was able to avert his eyes from the horror, he was, of course, mercilessly exposed to the sounds coming out of the ravine. He heard a splashing sound and wondered if it was the mud or the blood of the bastards he hoped John was slaughtering.
“1…4…0…6…Hood,” cried John breathlessly.
Reams, now fifty feet away, heard John’s cries now coming out in ragged, gurgling, and choked tones. As hard as he tried to keep the thoughts out from his mind, he could not help wonder if the change in sound was because the infected things had finally torn into his throat, or if he was simply drowning in his own blood. Reams fell prostrate, sobbing harder and more loudly than he ever had or ever would in his life.
* * *
Satisfied at having seen Reams walk away from the guardrail above, John turned to face the infected swarm that he was sure would be his demise. With reluctant acceptance, he realized that given his physical condition, surroundings, and the sheer number of infected shit-bags bearing down upon him, it would be nearly impossible for him to survive the encounter. Gripping the lug wrench on his weak side, he resolved to deliver as much retribution as possible before he was finally taken out.
While it was true that John participated in a moderate amount of hand-to-hand self-defense training, he did so primarily as a source of exercise, and had never had the occasion to acquire any real-world experience. Nevertheless, he realized that amidst the most unlikely scenario, the fruits of his efforts were about to be put to the test.
As the lead infected came within striking distance, John unleashed a devastating blow with the lug wrench, sending the thing crashing to the ground. Unsure if it was finished, he followed this with a second, stronger downward swing that culminated with an unsettling crunching sound as the thing’s skull collapsed under the force. A maroon spray of gelatinous fluid splattered across his arm, and for an instant, he wondered about the likelihood of contracting the responsible pathogen from exposure to the virulent fluid while engaging in such close quarters battle with the infected.
I don’t want to become one of them!
Pivoting, he acquired his next target—a shorter walking abomination that had been a middle-aged female before the infection. It wore a soiled red dress that might have been attractive several days ago. Now the crimson garment matched the thing’s sanguivorous, snarling mouth that was ringed with dried blood and tissue, making John question whether the dress had actually been red, or if the color was merely a byproduct of the thing’s messy eating habits. Red Dress was flanked on each side by a larger, formerly male rev, both of which bore even more significant signs of injury.
Even when humanity is faced with an epidemic of apocalyptic proportions, some things never change.
To the right of Red Dress, and about five feet behind, was a tall, thin man who appeared to be a cyclist, judging by the skintight spandex shorts and jersey. A hose hung from a hydration pack strapped to the rev’s back, swinging back and forth like the tail of some horrible animal as it advanced on him. Its left hand still sported a fingerless glove as it reached longingly for him; its right hand was missing all together. To Red Dress’ left, was an equally tall but beefier man, with a shaved head and a gore-encrusted beard. It wore no shirt, and its stalwart, tattooed upper body bulged ominously. John realized that while the revs did not possess much coordination and certainly no superhuman powers, the more fit they were before the infection, the stronger they were after. The right leg of the tattooed thing’s blue pants was torn open, revealing a nasty wound on its thigh from which strips of the quadriceps muscle dangled grotesquely. Of the three closest revs, John deemed this one to be the greatest threat.
As the trio closed to within long striking distance, John reflexively unleashed a powerful shuffling front kick that sent Red Dress trundling backward into the Cyclist. She bowled into its lanky frame and they both went down, though not permanently, John knew. Immediately after the front kick connected, John shifted his focus to the tattooed rev. As Tattoo was a few feet behind the Cyclist, John was able to recover and return to a solid fighting stance. Violently shifting his entire body mass forward, he connected with a brutal front roundhouse punch and felt the thing’s cheekbone collapse under the pressure. Continuing his forward momentum, he immediately brought the lug wrench around to smash into Tattoo’s temple, hoping to combine the lateral momentum of its head with the force of the blow. While the punch should have dropped the thing, John was unnerved to see that the rev showed little, if any, reaction to his initial fist strike. Any regular man would have been stunned at the very least, and nearly blinded by tears. Clearly, this was not a regular man.
John lamented to himself that a great deal of emphasis in his training had been placed on strikes to ‘vulnerable’ areas of the human body, and while they appeared almost identical to their healthy human counterparts, the infected were dramatically different with respect to these ‘vulnerable’ areas. They did not possess the capacity for fear or physical pain, two key weaknesses generally exploited when combating a human foe. John realized that if he survived he would have to significantly alter his tactics when dealing with this adversary.
Regardless, the blow from the wrench had the desired effect as Tattoos’ head – thrust into the blow by the preceding punch – was immediately snapped back in the direction from which it came. An audible cracking sound told John the cervical vertebrae fractured and likely severed the enclosed spinal cord.
Gasping for air, John’s hands unwillingly dropped to his knees as he doubled over from the exertion. He felt his vision blurring as his eyes were deprived of vital oxygen. He struggled to pull air into his burning lungs fast enough to quell his body’s protests. In his peripheral vision, he saw that Red Dress had managed to pull free from its antic embrace with the Cyclist. Willing his body to deal with the threat, he raised his head and staggered forward as the unsteadiness of hypoxemia assailed his brain. Red Dress made an uncoordinated lunge for him in what amounted to a marginally controlled fall as John swung the wrench half-heartedly. Instinctively, he sidestepped to try to gain position on the thing’s dead side. The action caused a morbid grin to arise in his mind’s eye, despite the lack of corresponding outward expression. He tried to come from the outside and muster a reverse sweep to put the thing on its back where he could end its miserable existence. Unfortunately, the muddy ground reared its slippery head once again, sending him tumbling backward as his feet struggled to maintain their precarious hold on terra firma. He landed flat on his back with a hard crash as all the precious air in his lungs was forcibly expelled once again. As he laid writhing and struggling to regain a fraction of the oxygen all around him yet completely out of reach, he cursed himself for not falling in a controlled manner as he had practiced so many times before.
After what seemed like an impossible eternity, a faint squeak heralded the return of the tiniest breath, as the oxygen slowly displaced the panic that had filled John’s lungs in its absence. As his vision began to clear, he saw Red Dress lying in the mud several feet away– the dress now completely caked in mud entirely obscuring its once crimson shade. The thing squirmed apparently having just as much trouble negotiating the slick mud. John rolled away and onto his stomach, attempting to rise up to his hands and knees. In his weakened state, even this effort, so readily performed by even the smallest child, sent him sprawling back to the ground below. He turned his head to the side as his cheek contacted the muddy earth, and at that moment, his senses were assaulted by a horrendous odor that was notably different than that of the infected mass bearing down upon him.
Focusing his eyes in the direction of the offensive odor, John immediately recognized the symbol stenciled on the wall above the murky quagmire. He realized he was looking at the sewer ditch at the base of the wall. With nothing left with which to wage war on the infected horde bearing down upon him, another story his father once told him flooded into his mind as if in a vision.
Abandoning the melee weapon clutched uselessly in his hand, he half-rolled, half-slid into the foul cesspool where he sank headlong into its shallow, repugnant depths. After completely submerging his head, much to the dismay of every fiber of his being, he rolled onto his back and came to the surface letting only his mouth and nose rise above the scum line as he fought back the uncontrollable urge to vomit. Easing over to the wall, he pressed his body tightly against the structure before chancing a glance toward the place he had been mere seconds ago. John saw the absolute embodiment of terror as approximately fifty revs in various states of decay and disrepair descended and milled about bumping into one another, seemingly confused by the absence of the prey that lured them there.
Suspended in the invidious stew, cloaked by its flatulent miasma, John fervently tried to still his mutinous stomach as the vivid details of his father’s story flashed through his mind. When his father had taken him deer hunting as a child, their blind was located on the edge of a pasture used for cattle grazing. John complained vehemently about the awful, cloying funk that smelled like stagnant sewage and asked to leave more than once. With a stern look that told the young John that not only were they staying put but that he also better stifle any further objections to their malodorous surroundings, Ben Wild shared a story to illustrate his point.
“Sure, it’s a bit overbearing and it smells like shit; there’s a good reason for that. It’s so strong, in fact, that I can’t smell anything
but
shit, can you?” Ben said with a grin. Not daring to answer the question that seemed like a trap, John sat quietly and listened to his father.
“Once, when my spotter and I were on mission in Vietnam, we found ourselves a little too close to the bad guys we were sent to observe. We had been silently monitoring the movements of the camp from a distance for a couple of days, and we realized we needed to get in closer to gather the desired intel. Over the next day we stalked about two hundred yards from our position to the edge of the camp’s east side. That night another enemy unit arrived at the camp and set up shop right behind us, essentially incorporating us into the camp,” continued Ben with his shit-eating grin now replaced by the subtle, proud smile of nostalgia.
“So, the two of us were hidden in plain view – camouflaged by our ghillie suits – for over thirty hours with about fifteen Viet Cong on each side until I finally got an idea. The makeshift latrines were on the east side of the original camp and were now more or less in the middle thanks to the new arrivals. Over the next twelve hours I moved the five or six feet to the side of the outhouse. As quiet as possible, I loosened a board along its base and punctured the refuse container within unleashing the most god-awful shit you’d ever smelled. It made this place smell like sweet apple pie, that’s for damn sure. I don’t know what the hell those guys eat, but damn! I bet it wasn’t fifteen minutes before the whole camp was abandoned, and we just waltzed right out of there.”
“You see, camouflage isn’t just about wearing the right clothes, painting your face up, and finding a good hiding spot. Sometimes there is no good hiding spot. In that case you make your own, and one of the best places to do that is in a place so undesirable that no one else would dare hide there, or even think to look there. How well do you think the deer can smell
us
over the stench? Now quiet down before you scare all the animals off,” concluded Ben, feeling confident he had gotten his point across.
Now staying as quiet and motionless as humanly possible, John waited, nearly submerged in the shit-pool for what seemed like eternity. He wondered if this might actually be some version of Hell as he had difficulty thinking of anything worse at the moment. Despite a vague understanding of what horrors and atrocities were committed during the Vietnam War, John could not help wonder which scenario was worse. At one point, a tangle of two revs came crashing into the water right next to him. After a great deal of flailing about, including one of them actually bumping him with a random swing of the arm, the two things managed to climb out of the ditch with what seemed like remarkable speed for the infected.
Despite the majority of his head being submerged in the murky, feculent liquid, and his ear canals being full of who the hell knows what, John suddenly heard a tremendous banging sound. He was not sure how long he had been in the miry pool, but the pervasive cold had nearly surpassed the acrid smell on his list of least favorite things about his current situation.
Am I hallucinating?
He could not tell where the banging sound was coming from, but he did see a notable shift in the seemingly random shambling of the remaining pus-bags.
Like blue-haired nursing home residents heading to the cafeteria, the revs slowly and haphazardly stumbled out of the alcove in a grisly procession toward whatever now rang the dinner bell. When he could no longer see any of the infected, John slowly rolled onto his side and half belly crawled toward what looked like the cleanest, most beautiful patch of Earth he had ever seen, despite the scattered body parts ‘dropped’ by the revs like trash left by careless concert-goers after a summer music festival. He slithered out of the mire and could do nothing but lie on the ‘clean’ ground. It was during this time that John caught sight of movement out of his left eye. He looked up to see a rev quietly hobbling toward him. The twisted and mutilated thing had a gaping neck wound and was missing a fair portion of its right leg. Its larynx hung out of its neck, teetering and bobbing on the end of its trachea like a puppet in a jack-in-the-box after some demonic kid finished cranking the hell out if the handle. As it approached, it moved its jaw expectantly. Aside from his own slow, shivering breaths, the only other sound John heard was the horrible clicking sound of the thing’s remaining teeth as they tapped out a rhythm like the little drummer boy of death.